The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,21

Berrydale Diner with Henry to get breakfast, because she’d seen how freaked out I was by the dream. I’d ordered a stack of pancakes and doused it in far more syrup than I should have, just because I could. Henry and I had shared a big plate of hash browns with ketchup. Once we were stuffed we walked back to our street slowly, stopping every few minutes to kick rocks or rescue worms from the sidewalk.

Henry had plucked a dandelion from a lawn and stuck it behind his ear that morning. I could still remember how it brought out the flecks of gold in his eyes.

I had loved him more than I was even aware.

“Was Sebastian a fearful child?” the Princess asked.

“No,” Henry said. “He was actually very brave.”

“Lies,” I said, shaking my head slowly.

“Not lies,” Henry told me. “He thought he was fearful, but he would have done anything to protect the people he loved.”

I wanted to slide right out of my skin. My cheeks burned hot with embarrassment at the compliment.

I knew I had been an anxious wreck as a child, and Henry’s compliments were at once agonizing and impossibly kind.

How could Henry still be this way? How could he still say these things about me when he was completely right about the last eleven years? I could have contacted him. I could have found some way, another secretive mission, to talk to him.

But I’d been too dead-set on being the prince I was meant to be. I had my little collection of small secrets but anything involving Henry—even thinking of him—had made me disintegrate inside.

And yet now he was still here. Still complimenting me.

There were far too many emotions welling inside me, especially after the amount of alcohol I had consumed.

I needed to send him home at once.

“Henry,” I said, glancing up at him as I stood. “It’s all right, Genoveve, stay. I need to speak to Henry briefly in the war room.”

“Oh,” Genoveve said, sitting down again, a knowing look in her eyes.

The war room was a small chamber down the hall from the dining room. Typically, it was only ever used for dire situations, when a dinner guest needed a stern reprimand or was being told they would be removed from the castle. My father apparently had used the war room a few times to fire workers from the castle, and my mother always told me that I should use it more often.

I had only used it twice in my entire time living in the castle. Once when I needed to fire a staff member for showing up to work drunk daily, and another time when a dinner guest was harassing a woman.

Genoveve understood that taking Henry into the war room meant I was going to be sending him home, and I could see the confusion on her face as Henry followed me down the short hall.

“War room, huh?” Henry was saying as we stepped through and I closed the heavy wooden door behind us. “Sounds real dicey, Sebastian.”

I turned on the small lamp sitting on the table just inside the door. The room had nothing more than a table, two chairs, and a few bookshelves that held old encyclopedias.

Henry looked so tall in here. He’d always been bigger than me, but something about the low ceiling made him look even more imposing than usual. He’d brought his drink glass in with him, and he held it in his hand casually, as if we were at some party.

I would have hated him if I didn’t love him so much.

“Henry,” I said, trying my best to feel powerful, princely, ready to kick him out.

“Sebastian,” he said, his voice low. “Sorry. Prince.”

His gaze landed on mine and my body filled with a slow heat.

The room felt even smaller now.

“Why did you take me into this place? You’re gonna put me in time out?” he asked, the corner of his lips quirking up in a small smile.

Henry wasn’t intimidated by me. Of course he wasn’t.

“That’s no way to speak to a prince,” I said, my voice sounding quieter than I would have liked.

“You care a lot more about this prince thing than you used to, y’know,” he said, pulling in a breath and sighing.

“It is my duty,” I said.

“To what? Your own ego?”

“To Frostmonte Castle,” I said, my chest tightening. “To Berrydale, and Deercrest, and Aldwick, and every other village in the lands below us. To my family’s legacy in the world. To my father. To history.”

“Well, what